Sheri Bodoh

by Sheri Bodoh

Touching and amusing in equal measure, W. Bruce Cameron’s A Dog’s Purpose examines the love shared by canines and their people from the canine’s point of view. Cameron’s puppy protagonist takes readers on a journey through his life—or rather, lives, because this very special dog lives and dies several times, searching always for his life’s purpose.

Starting off as a pup in a stray’s litter, the young dog has his first interaction with humans in a dog hoarder’s yard. There he learns to love people, but after Animal Control arrives, he suffers the sad fate of dogs deemed “unadoptable.” After being euthanized, he awakes in a new litter with a new life ahead of him, becoming Bailey, the beloved pet of eight-year-old Ethan. Embarking on the most pivotal period of his existence, he learns the satisfaction of being a “good dog” and experiences the most pure, joyful relationship he will have with a human. Bailey not only adores Ethan, he risks his life to protect him, and after years of devotion to his boy, he is sure he has fulfilled his purpose. But when he awakes again in a new—female—canine body, she finds that her journey is not yet finished, and she has more to learn than she realized.

Cameron’s exploration of the world through the eyes of a dog is clever in its humorous touches—Bailey’s conclusions that cats cannot be trusted and horses are completely unreliable are hilarious—and poignant in its depiction of a dog’s innate desire to please humans. The novel is bound to make readers reflect fondly on pets from their pasts, but the book’s greater triumph may lie in changing the way readers think about their current pets.

Having read Cameron’s wonderful book, I’m seeing my little Chloe (a ferret) in the more pure, equal way I looked at animals when I was a child, rather than in the detached fashion that I’m sad to realize has become my habit as an adult. What a gift. A Dog’s Purpose is a beautiful celebration of our four-footed friends’ big hearts.

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Fiction

Fiction

Tracing a family’s complicated past

Review by Sheri Bodoh

by Sheri Bodoh

Early in her debut novel, The House on Salt Hay Road, Carin Clevidence presents an image of the titular dwelling floating down a river on a barge. Likewise, the house on Salt Hay Road seems to follow its inhabitants throughout their lives, floating in the back of their minds like a dream, as Clevidence explores the tricky nature of family and the long-lasting power of home.

Twelve-year-old Clayton and 19-year-old Nancy have lived with their grandfather, Scudder, and aunt and uncle on Salt Hay Road since their mother’s death seven years ago. While Clayton loves everything about their marshy seaside surroundings, Nancy longs for something else. When she impulsively marries and leaves for Boston, resentments between family members gradually begin to take shape. Clayton is angry at Nancy’s new husband for taking his sister away, and he ignores her pleas to follow them to Boston; Nancy is hurt both by Clayton’s choice to remain at home and by the support his decision receives from the rest of the family. Meanwhile, Scudder stubbornly disowns Nancy, feeling betrayed by her departure.

As the family struggles with their estrangements over several years, the 1938 New England hurricane and Clayton’s departure for the Navy demonstrate to each of them just how their time together on Salt Hay Road has shaped them. At the heart of the novel is Nancy and Clayton’s love for each other—two orphans who drifted into a new home together at tender ages, and whose growing pains temporarily blind them to how much they truly need each other.

Clevidence’s movements are subtle as she quietly illuminates her characters’ motivations. Revealed slowly, each figure is brought to life through his or her memories. In this way, a snapshot emerges of a family cracked, but enduring. Gracefully, Clevidence’s depiction of familial bonds shows us the lasting marks left on us by those who raised us, those we have raised and the places that served as our foundations.

Fiction

Fiction

Walking into war

Review by Sheri Bodoh

by Sheri Bodoh

In her stunningly powerful debut novel, Tatjana Soli chronicles a young female photojournalist’s 10-year odyssey through love and war. Soli’s Vietnam is by turns tender and terrifying, casting a spell of both beauty and horror on her protagonist, Helen Adams, which doesn’t let go until the book’s transcendently agonizing climax. I ached to know Helen’s fate. I know other readers will as well.

Helen arrives in the war-ravaged country in 1965, a naïve but determined California girl fresh from college, apparently searching for answers about her soldier brother’s death—but really looking for something inside herself that she cannot define. Thrusting herself into combat before she has learned to work a camera properly, she embarks on what begins as a test of courage and eventually becomes an addiction to the war. Growing attuned to the dreamlike but nightmarish qualities of her new life, Helen would rather be in Vietnam than anywhere else. Dense as the jungle, Soli’s prose is ever-changing, revealing itself layer by layer and masterfully evoking Helen’s heightened senses with poetic descriptions of the sights, sounds, smells and tactile experiences of Saigon, rural village life and deadly military operations on land and in the air. But it also conveys Helen’s feeling of restless, fractured movement. Psychologically, Helen cannot tell whether she is running toward something or away—or in camouflaged circles.

Guideposts in her kaleidoscopic world are two men: Sam Darrow, a legendary, married war photographer whose search for unattainable answers and thirst for risky missions predate and mirror Helen’s; and Linh, a Vietnamese soldier-turned-photographer’s assistant who has lost all he loves to the war. They both shape her life irrevocably, making her behold her nearly unbearable weaknesses but also intensifying her strengths. But neither can make her see exactly when to stop pushing for the answer that eludes her—when will she be finished with the war? With Vietnam? Even as she and Linh struggle through the streets of Saigon, hoping to escape with their lives during the city’s fall, Helen does not know the answer. But Soli’s incredibly moving work comes to an expertly crafted conclusion, and her novel should serve as a fitting tribute to the people of Vietnam, the land itself, the soldiers who fought there and those individuals who seek to forever capture war’s horrifying—and edifying—images.

Sheri Bodoh writes from Eldridge, Iowa.

Fiction, Women's Fiction

Fiction Women's Fiction

Friendship and family in a foreign land

Review by Sheri Bodoh

by Sheri Bodoh

When 33-year-old Celeste Duncan receives a package of mysterious items from her late aunt Michiko—a non-blood relative she hasn’t seen in decades—it’s like receiving a puzzling gift from a stranger. Everything changes, however, when various items in the box, including a photo of six-year-old Celeste in a kimono, begin to rekindle long-forgotten memories from her childhood, such as vague recollections of an “Aunt Mitch.” Celeste had been shuffled through a series of foster homes as a child and never had a true sense of family, so when she learns that Mitch’s sister in Japan may know the identity of her biological father, Celeste says sayonara to California and gives a nervous but determined konnichiwa to Tokyo, where she embarks on a homestay situation that is fraught with misunderstandings and culture clashes. Not to mention a sexy homestay “brother” named Takuya . . . as if things weren’t complicated enough!

As Celeste’s crush on Takuya grows, so does her affection for the strange and wonderful world she has immersed herself in. Her search for clues about her family takes her in unexpected directions, and soon the unconventional help of Mariko, her potty-mouthed Japanese language instructor, and a newfound love for singing Japanese music change her life irrevocably.

Love in Translation is romantic, fun and frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Celeste’s inner monologues about the oddness of the places and people she encounters (including a viciously perky television hostess) are a riot, and the lanky Takuya grows more adorable—and their burgeoning romance more sweet—as Celeste’s infatuation intensifies. It’s not easy being a gaijin—foreigner—in Japan, what with all the gaping and gawking that takes place on trains or even just walking down the street, but Takuya provides Celeste with a refuge from all of that. A disapproving homestay mother who is not afraid to meddle and a surprise ex-girlfriend provide entertaining conflict for the would-be lovers. Meanwhile, the connections that Celeste makes as she searches for details on her past are touching, while the perspectives offered on Japan make for a fascinating and light-hearted cross-cultural study. Heartwarming in its takes on family, love and finding one’s voice, Wendy Nelson Tokunaga has written a book that will charm readers worldwide.

Sheri Bodoh writes from Eldridge, Iowa.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

A grandmother’s story

Review by Sheri Bodoh

by Sheri Bodoh

Jackson Taylor weaves an affecting—if at times disturbing—and ultimately hopeful tale while tackling issues of gender, class, family and race in his first novel, The Blue Orchard, based upon the remarkable life of his grandmother, Verna Krone. In 1954, Verna, a white nurse, and Charles Crampton, an African-American physician, were arrested in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for performing scandalous “illegal operations”; in Taylor’s hands, this is the pivotal point from which Verna looks back on her life.

Born into poverty in rural Pennsylvania, Verna, a bright student, is pulled out of school in the 1920s to support the family. Thus begins her journey from home to home and job to job, endlessly searching for some control over her life. During her term as a hired farm girl, her boss takes advantage of her, leaving her pregnant at 14, but under the guidance of a local midwife, her “trouble” is taken care of.

Pregnancy, parenting and children’s fates are major themes in The Blue Orchard, as Verna later becomes a mother, leaves her newborn son to be raised by her own unwilling mother, marries a man who has abandoned his children and becomes the vigilant caregiver for thousands of women of all ages, incomes and situations, who surreptitiously stream through her door to recover from abortions performed by Dr. Crampton—an occupation that brings her financial security beyond her wildest dreams but invokes new stresses and fears.

Verna is a flawed but strong woman whose self-examination is uncompromising. Her association with Dr. Crampton, a pillar of Harrisburg’s African-American community whose ties to the Harvey Taylor political machine build him up but tragically leave him a broken man, exposes her to dirty politics, deceit, injustice and emergencies that bring out the best and worst in her. Taylor’s unflinching and gracefully written novel brings us face-to-face with ugly national and personal realities, not only helping us to understand our collective history and family dynamics, but also helping to frame the contemporary abortion debate. A moving and important novel, The Blue Orchard is a fine read.

Sheri Bodoh writes from Eldridge, Iowa.